Wednesday, September 10, 2014

Tech Tips

Google Gmail – Canned Responses
Do you find yourself typing the same message over and over? Google Gmail has the answer. Canned Responses is a Lab, (located in settings), that allows you to insert pre-formatted content you create into your messages.

Click the gear icon in the upper right-hand corner of Gmail, and choose Settings.

Click the Labs tab, find Canned Responses and click the Enable radio button to enable Canned Responses, scroll down and click Save Changes.

Compose an email message you’d like to use over and over again, and then click the arrow in the lower right-hand corner of the message window. Choose Canned Responses, and under the Save heading, select New Canned Response. Give your response a name and click OK.

To use your Canned Response, click the arrow button in the lower right-hand corner and select Canned Responses. Under Insert, choose the Canned Response you created in the previous step. You’ll then see your response appear in the body of your email.

CANVAS CORNERCanvas Student Editable Pages
Whether you are new to Canvas or not, there may be tricks that you were unaware of, or possibilities in teaching your course that you have not considered. Here is one example.

Student Editable Pages

The pages area in Canvas is excellent for designing rich multimedia content for yourcourse. However, it can also be a collaborative space. Next time you are editing a page, scroll down to the bottom and take a quick glance at the drop down menu that lets you choose who has editing rights. There you will find options to make the page to be editable by your students. Think of the possibilities!
If you’re worried about tracking student’s efforts or managing the possibility that a student may delete important content, look no further than the page history at the top right. There you can see who has contributed and what past versions of the page looked like. You can even roll back versions if needed.